BEL AWAITS OFF­SETS WIND­FALL

With a mod­est $42 mil­lion in ex­ports in 2013-14, Bharat Elec­tron­ics Ltd (BEL) is an­tic­i­pat­ing big ex­port or­ders on ac­count of off­sets aris­ing from forth­com­ing de­fence con­tracts with for­eign OEMs. BEL has es­tab­lished MoUs with sev­eral com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing El­bit Sys­tems, Boe­ing, Lock­heed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grum­man, BAE Sys­tems, Saab, Thales, IAI for pos­si­ble off­set business aris­ing out of var­i­ous RFPs is­sued by the MoD. Hav­ing es­tab­lished a coastal surveil­lance radar sys­tem for two coun­tries, BEL is in­ter­act­ing with the Min­istry of Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs on a reg­u­lar ba­sis for sup­ply of sim­i­lar sys­tems to other friendly na­tions. On the front­line of high­tech­nol­ogy man­u­fac­ture for de­fence ap­pli­ca­tions, BEL has wo­ken up to stiff com­pe­ti­tion from highly ca­pa­ble pri­vate sec­tor firms that stand to gain sim­i­larly from the wind­fall of in­bound or­ders and tech­nol­ogy on the off­sets wave. BEL is also work­ing to ex­pand its ex­port cat­a­logue. Un­der the new ‘Make in In­dia’ phi­los­o­phy rolled out by the gov­ern­ment, the DPSU has de­cided to ramp up in­ter­nal R&D ef­forts and fund ad­vanced sys­tems in­ter­nally in a big­ger way than ever be­fore, in­stead of de­pend­ing solely on the DRDO and al­lied agen­cies. The re­sult­ing sys­tems could in­clude radars and sen­sors, man por­ta­ble sen­sors and com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­vices, en­crypted com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment for in­dige­nous and for­eign air­craft and new gen­er­a­tion warn­ing sys­tems.